Based on a True Story, David Gregory
Sudden Valley Press, 2024

Finding Your Own way Home

 

There is a speed limit
on Memory Lane
and the fog doesn’t help.

I am racing my sister
to the next recollection
because somebody has
to claim the truth.

The truth is, there isn’t any
in this fanciful landscape.

You place the house in the sun,
while I remember the rain.

But there is the constant
of our mother,
standing in the doorway
after he left.

And you, sister, on your high horse
and me on my old green bike.

 

David Gregory

What is it that imbues a poetry collection with charisma, that insists you spend as much time with it as possible, that gets you thinking (even more) about what poetry can do and be? Is it the invisible strings that reattach you to the world as you read? Poetry that gets you imagining feeling pondering. Poetry that pulls you towards the unknown, that might settle and resettle, that is deeply and poignantly human. That delivers a fascinating poetry-mesh of motifs, subjects, references, allusions, withholdings. That holds you in clearings and carries you along pathways. Charismatic poetry is all of this and more. Subtle, blazing, nuanced, half shuttered, open hearted.

My life is the colour of water
nothing of itself
but what it borrows.

 

from ‘The Colour of Water’

David Gregory’s new collection, Based on a True Story, is perhaps one of my favourite poetry reads of the year. I never do best picks. Book of the year kind of thing. But reading this book has been exactly what I needed. So here I go, this is my poetry book of 2024.

The collection is divided into three sections that resound with narrative possibilities: ‘Once Upon a Time’, ‘Intermission’, ‘The End of the Beginning’.

The opening poem, ‘Finding your way home’, reinforces the expectation that we are entering poetry fields of travel, that memory will propel trains of thought, that memory is inconstant as much as it is necessary. In the opening poem, there is sun and rain, a high horse and a green bike, and more than anything, pathos. What is spoken fuels what is withheld, what is unspoken fertilises what is said.

Think of this collection as time travel, but also consider it as a meditation on time. There is the way time stalls as you read and the outside world dissolves to the point it is just you and the text. A slow pace of contemplation permeates the writing, and time itself is a recurring theme.

There is a focus on both the particular and the personal that stretches wide to draw in universal themes and motifs: war, sky, the weather, order, chaos, reading the world, floods, flight, beauty, writing the world whether exterior or internal. There is the way those we love might disappear into the shadows after they die, into the slipperiness of unknowing, leaving the mutations of family memories, the footprints of love. I am especially drawn to the poems where the mother or father make an entry. Poignant. One moment I am brimming with a sad ache and the next, moving tenderness.

Her life smoored
in the cold hearth
of her marriage.

 

from ‘Smoor’

We hold the hand of large ideas
big as parents
and so many years
from understanding.

 

from ‘Are We There Yet?’

Ah, I am drawn to poems that deliver philosophy as much as they deliver heart. To take an idea and hold it on your tongue and savour the taste. How does this work you might ask? Let it linger as you taste the sweetness sourness connections. I loiter upon, ‘The sea is the music that plays itself’, I am stalled by ‘Recollection is an old street in a seeping dusk’, and of course, ‘It’s not the speed of light that counts/ as much as / the speed of darkness’.

The future is blank paper
untrodden sand
and the sea’s voice.

Tell me it is not
a story written over
all the other stories?

 

from ‘Based on a True Story’

Linguistic surprises add to the delight in reading this collection; the utter love of what words can do is contagious. Whether it is aural chords, an unanticipated word choice, an agile simile, lithe language that serves our ears ‘Our shadows puddled out before us’, ‘A fine sieve in the sky today / giving us a dust of drizzle’, ‘I peel onions, / watch famine’s spare ribs / through the fly’s facets, television’.

Heart is what I crave when I read poetry this year. I open any page in David’s collection and I am breathing in heart.

David Gregory arrived in Christchurch NZ from the UK on a three year contract in 1982 and found a supportive literary community here. In spite of spending a year back in England on a job exchange, the pull of NZ was strong for him and his family. That whanau has grown to include four grandchildren. He has worked on coastal environmental issues for most of his working life. He has combined this with establishing his reputation as a New Zealand poet with four books to his credit. His poetry has appeared in many NZ publications and a number of anthologies and has been performed at venues in NZ and overseas. David is a founder member of the Canterbury Poets Collective. With the late John O’Connor, he established Sudden Valley Press (SVP) and is the current Manager and one of the editors.

Sudden Valley Press page

You can hear David read here as part of Poetry Shelf’s summer readings.

Final Whistle
Ōngarue, 1996

Now it’s happened, even the sound is startling
like a braking train, or a morepork hunting.
All of us are here in the bulging cookhouse,
laughing and eating.

When we started here, I was told the men would
need a bit of mothering. Sure, they did, but
it was like a family. Well I don’t know
why I am crying,

thinking of the bush and its eerie sadness,
rain collapsing all of the things we made here.
Still, I know they’ve sawn every dip and ridge, left
nothing of value.

Airini Beautrais
from Flow: Whanganui River Poems, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2017

I have loved all Airini’s poetry collections, numerous poems have travelled with me. I have picked ‘Final Whistle’, from Flow, to share. It’s a haunting poem that folds and unfolds a thousand times as you read. Just as the collection does. In 2017 I wrote of the book: “The sumptuous choral effect produces so many layers, it is a book that demands multiple attentions.” You can see this poetic succulence in ‘Final Whistle’, this ability to produce myriad chords, shadows and light, presence and absence, intricate feeling.

In 2017, to celebrate the arrival of Flow, Airini and I embarked upon an email conversation over the course of a week. Such generosity on her part. Reading the conversation all these years later, it resonates so profoundly. The way we can slow down to a gentle pace and absorb poetry, fiction, music, art. Whether as readers or writers. Feels quite special to have done this leisurely, satisfying thing.

Here is the start of our conversation, words that remind me why I dedicate time and energy to poetry:

“After reading the first few pages of your new collection, Flow: Whanganui River Poems, I felt the kind of spark that travels like electricity through your body as you read: heart, mind, ear, eye, everything on alert. When I was doing my Masters in Italian I read the fragmented fiction of Gianni Gelati. His writing was poetic, strange, addictive. With Narratori delle pianure (Storytellers of the plains), he travelled the length of the River Po, collecting stories from people who lived there. His people, his river, yet while the river dictated the itinerary, it was less of a protagonist. Instead the people he met flourished on the page in their out-of-the-ordinary ordinariness.

I had the idea at page 24 of Flow to have an email conversation with you as I read. I wondered how my relations with the poems might change over the course of reading; the reading would act as my surrogate river with its various currents and tributaries. I wondered how I would shift in view of the poetics, the ideas, stories, characters and the river itself. The book fills me with curiosity and delight at what poems can do.”

You can read the conversation here.

Lizzie De Vegt, a singer / musician, made ‘Final Whistle’ into a song. You can listen here.

Excerpt from The Beautiful Afternoon (THWUP 2024)

Airini Beautrais is a multi-genre writer and educator who lives in Whanganui. Her most recent collection of poetry is Flow: Whanganui River Poems (VUP 2017). Her collection of essays, The Beautiful Afternoon, was published in 2024.

Over the summer months Poetry Shelf is hosting a series of readings from the incredible range of poetry collections published by mainstream and boutique presses in Aotearoa in 2024. You can hear David Gregory read here.

anthology (n.) a collection of flowers 
Gail Ingram, Pūkeko Publications 2024

anthology (n.) a collection of flowers is like an ode to nature, a rich illustrated compendium of native flowers, that is encyclopedic, poetic, personal and that reaches out scented tendrils and draws nourishment from other poets, history, music, symbolism, myth, eco-fragility and wide ranging experience. Each poem is labelled with English, Te Reo and botanical names, a few facts and a photograph. The poetry is as multi-hued as the flowers, presenting a seeded and blooming meadow of past present future.

Gail reads two poems

‘They is gender diverse’

‘Grandmother and granddaughter choose a tattoo’

Definition of a buttercup

It’s easy with one word:
buttercup
but difficult with many:
it equals the sun, each calling
to the other; yellow shining
like melted butter in a porcelain cup 
under your chin
do you like butter?
grows using photosynthesis
and “water” (see later poem); 
hairy leaves as described by
alpine botanists 
with microscopic vision; 
it roots itself to
earth in a goldilocks position
between rocks, in bogs; the chance
that you stumble across one
looking up between milky
500-million-year-old karst 
under the giddy sun
this new year’s day 
in some new millennium, spinning outwards 
in an ever-expanding universe with other 
star-spiralling galaxies 
is so
immeasurably 
small.

Gail Ingram (she, her, they) writes from the Port Hills of Ōtautahi Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand and is author of three collections of poetry. Her latest collection, anthology (n.) a collection of flowers (Pūkeko Publications 2024) weaves poetry and botanical and mountain art. Her second and third collections Some Bird (2023) and Contents Under Pressure (2019) were published by Sudden Valley Press and Pūkeko Publications respectively. Her work has been widely published in local and international journals and anthologies, such as Poetry New Zealand, Landfall, Atlanta Review, The Spinoff, Cordite Poetry Review and Barren Magazine. Awards include winning the Caselberg (2019) and New Zealand Poetry Society (2016) international poetry prizes. She has edited for NZ Poetry Society’s flagship magazine a fine line, Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction and takahē. She teaches at Write On School for Young Writers and holds a Master of Creative Writing (Distinction). 

New Literary Award in NZ goes to Brian Turner

The Central Otago Environmental Society, COES, has awarded Brian Turner the NZ Poet Laureate of Nature for his lifetime’s work in poetry and activism, fighting for and celebrating the natural world. This is a new national award in New Zealand, and is backed by the National Library of New Zealand and by former sponsors of the NZ Poet Laureate Award, John and Wendy Buck of Te Mata Wines.

Brian Turner was appointed the fourth Te Mata Estate NZ Poet Laureate in 2003-2005.

“During his tenure and in the following years, we formed a strong friendship with many shared interests, growing to admire him as an outstanding New Zealander,” says John Buck. “His myriad achievements justify the title of Poet Laureate of Nature, which we fully support.”

Peter Ireland spoke on behalf of the National Library, home to the New Zealand Poet Laureate Award.  “Brian’s whakapapa in terms of speaking to and of the environment in New Zealand is founded on a lifetime’s presence in our landscape, both the physical and literary forms of it. He is much loved, respected and recognised in these spheres and to acknowledge that with this honour is apt and fitting.”

As part of the award, there will be a sculpture of one of Brian’s poems in his loved landscape of Central Otago.

“It’s remarkable and warming to be given this award,” Brian said. “New Zealand has had the means to work hard to protect nature. Instead we’ve often cruelly damaged a lot of our forests and our lands and waters. It was important I was a supporter of environmental concerns, taking part and drawing attention to the respect required for our natural world.”

Brian came to know the land and waters of New Zealand intimately. Now 80, he was a national sportsman, an offshore sailor, a fly fisherman, a road cyclist, and and a mountaineer, climbing several major peaks including Aoraki/Mount Cook. He traversed the land and the rivers and wrote of them and for them; his environmental activism extending for over fifty years. There is much wisdom in his observation that “an attack against the Body of Nature is an attack against oneself”.

As well as the NZ Poet Laureate award, Brian Turner has been awarded numerous awards, including an Hon D Litt from the University of Otago, an ONZOM for his services to literature and the environment, the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry, the Commonwealth  Poetry prize and several national book awards for poetry. Much of his writing has been in service to the natural world.

To celebrate this much deserved award, Jillian Sullivan, Peter Ireland and Paula Green have each picked a poem of Brian’s to share.

3 poems

Taieri Days

How far off those days, never mine
and never not mine, when
the only poems I knew
were the bursting greens of willows
by the Taieri in spring,
greens of cress and water weed
and the grass that sheep grazed
incognito because they all
looked much the same.

But the sky never did,
the clouds never did
shaped like tubes, plates, slats,
piles of rubble, knucklebones
and bunting streaming before the stars.

The river sprang and shone,
had a shifty and open
arrangement with skies
arcing and stretching
over the Maungatua
and Rock and Pillar ranges.

I didn’t want to own
or sell anything so grand
and communal as land;
all I needed
was the right to belong,
one’s spirit all the colours
of the spectrum,
like the sky.

Brian Turner
from Quadrant, v 42, 1998

I love this poem, imagining Brian in the hills and by the river, only needing to belong. A year ago when I asked him how he finds contentment, he said straight away, “I like the formation of the clouds,” and here they are in this poem, first published in Quadrant in 1998.

Jillian Sullivan

Just This

Find your place on the planet, dig in,
and take responsibility from there.
_ Gary Snyder

Affecting without affectation, like these sere hills
then the early evening sky where Sirius dominates
for a time, then is joined by lesser lights,

stars indistinct as those seen through the canopies
of trees shaking in the wind. There’s this wish
to feel part of something wholly explicable

and irreplaceable, something enduring
and wholesome that supresses the urge to fight …
or is there? Ah, the cosmic questions

that keep on coming like shooting stars
and will, until, and then what? All I can say
is that for me nothing hurts more

than leaving and nothing less than coming home,
when a nor’wester’s gusting in the pines
like operatic laughter, and the roadside grasses

are laced with the blue and orange and pink
of bugloss, poppies and yarrow, all of them
swishing, dancing, bending, as they do, as we do.

Brian Turner
from Just This, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2009

It is hard to settle on one poem by Brian, but the heading quote by Gary Snyder tipped my choice in favour of ‘Just this’, the title poem of the book published in 2009. It has been lovely returning to Brian’s poems, though it’s not as though they ever leave you. To his voice – bardic, truly wise, looking at the world through the eye of the world, and the heart. Helping us to accept and to enjoy our predicament.

Peter Ireland

Deserts, for instance

The loveliest places of all
are those that look as if
there’s nothing there
to those still learning to look

Brian Turner
from Just This, Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2009

I cannot think of a more apt poet to be the inaugural NZ Poet Laureate of Nature. Brian’s poetry has provided paths and windows that enrich our connections with nature. In every book. In myriad ways. His poems sing with the music of Central Otago, they glimmer with the light and beauty of skies mountains plains. Poetry that brings nature to life within poetic forms is a vital aid, not just today in these toxic planet and human depleting times, but across the centuries. Like Peter, Brian’s poetry sticks with me, as a tonic in the difficulty of a day, as a way of breathing in what matters, what is important. I have lived with an artist for eons who is known for his Central Otago beehive works, so the southern landscapes resonate deeply for me. Perhaps this adds to the incredible effect Brian’s poetry has upon my heart. The poem I have chosen shows how a handful of words can unfold into so much more. Sublime.

Te Herenga Waka University page

Brian Turner was born in Dunedin in 1944. His first book of poems, Ladders of Rain (1978), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and was followed by a number of highly praised poetry collections and award-winning writing in a wide range of genres including journalism, biography, memoir and sports writing. Recent and acclaimed poetry collections include Night Fishing (VUP, 2016), and Just This (winner of the New Zealand Post Book Award for Poetry in 2010). He was the Te Mata Estate New Zealand Poet Laureate 2003–05 and received the Prime Minister’s Award for Poetry in 2009. He lives in Central Otago.

Based on a True Story, David Gregory, Sudden Valley Press, 2024

Over the summer months Poetry Shelf is hosting a series of readings from the incredible range of poetry collections published by mainstream and boutique presses in Aotearoa in 2024. I begin with David Gregory. I have dipped in and out of this glorious book over the past months. It has haunted me. It has delighted me. It has moved me. Now I get to hear him read two of the poems. Listening to him read this, I want more! Now I get to read the book again in his voice.

Here’s to a festival of summer readings on Poetry Shelf. Thanks to all the poets who are contributing.

a reading

‘Half a moon’

‘Half a Prayer’

David Gregory arrived in Christchurch NZ from the UK on a three year contract in 1982 and found a supportive literary community here. In spite of spending a year back in England on a job exchange, the pull of NZ was strong for him and his family. That whanau has grown to include four grandchildren.

He has worked on coastal environmental issues for most of his working life. He has combined this with establishing his reputation as a New Zealand poet with three books to his credit and a fourth due to be launched soon.His poetry has appeared in many NZ publications and a number of anthologies and has been performed at venues in NZ and overseas.

David is a founder member of the Canterbury Poets Collective. With the late John O’Connor, himself a noted poet, he established Sudden Valley Press (SVP).  SVP has published over thirty well-received poetry books. He is the current Manager and one of the editors for Sudden Valley Press.

Sudden Valley Press page

Love poem

Houses are likened to shoeboxes but shoeboxes are
not likened to houses. A car is likened to a heap but
a heap is not likened to a car. A child is a terror but
terror is not a child. A business might be a sinking ship
but a sinking ship is no business. A bedroom is a dog’s
breakfast but a dog’s breakfast is not a bedroom. A bad
review might be a raspberry but a raspberry is not a bad
review. A haircut is likened to a disaster but a disaster
is not a haircut. Books can be turkeys but turkeys are
never books. A holiday might be a riot but a riot is not
a holiday. A garden might become a headache but a
headache is not a garden. I dream about you but you
are not a dream.

Gregory O’Brien
from Beauties of the Octagonal Pool, Auckland University Press, 2021

Over the coming months, the Monday Poem spot will include poetry that has stuck to me over time, poems that I’ve loved for all kinds of reasons.

I have loved Gregory’s poetry across every collection, from Location of the Least Person (Auckland University Press, 1987) to House and Contents (Auckland University Press, 2022). He writes with sweet wit, word agility, sonic attention, across roving subject matter, and with deep-seated heart. I am always moved, surprised, in awe, nourished. The humour in ‘Love poem’ gets me every time, and then, when I reach the end, and the world stalls, I take a long inward breath, and say, yes, this is what poetry can do.

So let’s do poetry!

Gregory O’Brien’s recent projects include an exhibition of poems and paintings at the Manchester Poetry Library, U. K., Jan-Feb 2024, and  ‘Local Knowledge’, an exhibition of collaborative paintings made with Euan Macleod, which is at Te Manawa, Palmerston North, until March 2025.

opening my latest book arrivals

inVisible cities

Inside the city a house
Inside the house a room
Inside the room a cupboard
Inside the cupboard a drawer
Inside the drawer a box
Inside the box a necklace
Inside the necklace a story
Inside the story a city home

Ah, I woke up before the birds and began to build a list of things I love and am grateful for. I increased my donation to The Spin Off. Their commitment to political analysis, celebrating the arts, writing that upholds planetary wellbeing, that values our cultural differences along with our connections, is exemplary.

I tuned into the BBC podcast People Fixing the World and am reminded that behind the toxicity of leaders hellbent on destroying this planet and its people, there are those who work selflessly to mend, repair, heal, nourish.

I read of an anonymous donor who has gifted a copy of Understanding Te Tiriti: A handbook of basic facts about Te Tiriti o Waitangi by barrister Roimata Smail (Ngāti Maniapoto, Tainui, England, Scotland, Ireland) to every secondary school in Aotearoa.

I am mindful that so many people are on rocky roads, weathering health challenges, family and personal tragedies, violence, poverty, hunger.

These are tough dark times. For the past months, I have been weathering my own rugged track, with a zillion appointments, and my daily energy jar shrinking. Poetry Shelf holds on by a whisker because, for me, it is an essential place of connection and aroha. It is an energy booster. A joy.

Whatever I do, I do out of love. I write out of love, I read out of love. Cook, bake bread, garden, walk. When my energy jar shrinks, I think self doubt amplifies and I question my ability to review books or write posts! But I keep hold of my tool kit and take another little step. Mistakes and all.

Ah. I have stack of poetry books on my desk to review – a towering pile because some days all I can do is listen to music or watch UK detective shows or bake Morning Glory Muffins (riffing off Harvest Wheat) or make sough dough bread with red quinoa (my latest version so yum!!).

And yes, I am deeply committed to Poetry Shelf, to upholding and nurturing its role as a hub for poets, readers and writers. Now more than ever it feels important – and I can’t wait to post more series next year.

In the meantime, I will be posting a 2024 highlights collage mid December and I am hoping to post reviews and more poems I love in the Monday spot.

an invite

This morning I was wondering if you would like to review a poetry book published in Aotearoa in 2024 that you have loved?

Saying no is important! This is just in case it is something you would like to do and share.

I would have six $50 book vouchers to give as koha. I could also give someone a bundle of my poetry books. I would post the reviews in December.

email me: paulajoygreen@gmail.com

I would gift six book vouchers – one per person.

And this is just if you have read a nz poetry book and loved it – I am holding onto my copies to read and review and keep in my poetry library for further use on blog.

If you are keen, let me know the name of the poetry book you would review.

Landfall Essay Competition judge Lynley Edmeades has announced the joint winners of this year’s competition: Franchesca Walker for her essay ‘Unsteady ground’ and Hannah August for her essay ‘Response to a restructure’.

Franchesca Walker’s essay explores her whānau’s history, uncovering new stories about her great-grandfather following her grandfather’s passing.

‘The essay is about secrets and it is about stories. But I don’t for a minute think that these experiences are unique to my family,’ Walker says. ‘In fact, a lot of the essay’s themes, including violence, alcoholism and intergenerational trauma, are unfortunately shared by many whānau. I actually think ‘Unsteady ground’ is an essay about the enduring impact of colonisation on Māori, although viewed through the lens of a single family.’

Walker describes writing the essay as an act of love for her tīpuna, whose resilience she admires. ‘Despite having the odds stacked against them, they kept their heads above water, kept food on the table, and kept going even when things must’ve seemed pretty bleak. Our tīpuna were heroes, but occasionally they were also villains. They were victims and perpetrators and lovers and fighters and every embodiment of humanity in between. Recognising this reality does not weaken us—on the contrary, I believe it empowers.’

In her judge’s report, Lynley Edmeades praised Walker’s essay for showing ‘what happens when a culture is silenced, when emotional and psychic lives are repressed.’ Edmeades also commended Walker for her ability to weave together fragmented memories, apocryphal stories and journalistic interpretations to create a valuable mosaic of a man who was subject to the many overbearing powers of his time. ‘With the lightest of touches, she prompts the reader to think about how the fragments of our ancestors live on within us and how the fractures and fissures might play out in our waking life.’

Hannah August’s essay critiques the recent cuts to humanities programmes in universities across Aotearoa, challenging the prevailing neoliberal societal framework that prioritises financial returns. ‘It’s still worth pointing out that there are alternative types of value that cannot be easily measured – the value of learning without a clear end goal, the value of emotional connections to works of art or literature, the value of intellectual communities that consist of diverse individuals with diverse spheres of knowledge and diverse levels of expertise. My essay seeks to explore these other types of value, and to remind readers that they exist.’ 

August’s essay is also a tribute to those affected by university restructures, particularly friends and colleagues in the humanities across Aotearoa, Australia and the United Kingdom. ‘Some of them have lost their jobs; some of them are still employed but with vastly increased workloads as they try to fill the gaps left by departed colleagues. I wanted to capture and pay tribute to that ubiquitous experience, and to articulate what is lost in the aftermath of a university restructure that involves staff redundancies, as well as some of what has been lost more generally in our understanding of what a university is and should be following the Covid-19 pandemic.’

Edmeades commended August’s essay for its insightful exploration of ‘the act of silencing by institutional power in the interest of profiteering models.’ She added, ‘It also makes a superb argument for the place of the public intellectual, which we need now more than ever before. Her writing is gentle and affective, authentic and unashamedly subjective.’

 Edmeades noted that both essays, when considered side-by-side, revealed ‘threads of connective tissue,’ which made it impossible for her to pick between the two pieces for a single winner.

‘In their different ways, both essays suggest that manipulating ideologies for the purposes of expansion and control—either colonial or capitalist—will always have an effect. The more we can attune to the voices of our past—both collective and individual—the more fight we might have in us to endure the weight of the present and to effect positive change in the future.’

 ‘Unsteady ground’ by Franchesca Walker and ‘Response to a restructure’ by Hannah August will be featured in Landfall 248: Spring 2024.

Landfall is Aotearoa New Zealand’s longest-running arts and literary journal. This taonga is published twice a year and each issue features two full-colour art portfolios, fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, essays, reviews and cultural commentary. Landfall is an exciting anthology that has it’s finger on the pulse of creativity, providing a snapshot of Aotearoa’s unique literary landscape today. Landfall 248: Spring 2024 is dedicated to the late Vincent O’Sullivan, one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s most influential writers. This issue also announces the joint winners of the 2024 Landfall Essay Competition, a landmark annual essay competition. This exciting new issue will also include essays from the 2024 collaboration with RMIT University’s nonfiction/Lab and will announce the winner of the 2024 Caselberg International Poetry Prize.